Russian Armed Forces 1700-1917

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Admiral Lazarev (1788–1851) drove many of the reforms that
helped mold Russia into the world’s second naval power by the 1830s.
An explorer in his early days as an officer, he formed close
relationships with officers of the Royal Navy when serving in the
Mediterranean, keeping abreast of new developments in ship design and
ordnance developments in the process. He remained open to change
throughout his life, and promoted improvements in ordnance and the
adoption of steam propulsion, working to overcome the complacency and
lethargy of a peacetime navy. His greatest gifts were as an
administrator, and his two most accomplished subordinates were
Vice-Admirals Pavel Nakhimov and Vladimir Kornilov, both of whom died in
the siege of Sevastopol’. Painted by L. D. Blinov 1885, after Karl
Briullov’s portrait.

Mikhail Lazarev succeeded to command of the Black Sea fleet in 1833
after an extraordinary early career that had involved three
circumnavigations of the globe, the discovery of the Antarctic mainland,
combat at Navarino as commander of Rear-Admiral Login Petrovich
Geiden’s flagship Azov, and command of the blockade of the Dardanelles
in the 1828–9 war. He was a ruthless critic of what he considered to
have been the shoddy construction standards of Russian Black Sea
warships and did much to upgrade infrastructure and quality control
during his tenure as commander. During his earlier years, Lazarev had
established close relations with British officers serving in the
Mediterranean and he introduced uniform calibre gun establishments along
lines established in the Royal Navy in the 1820s at a time when the
less progressive Baltic fleet remained tied to mixed batteries, with the
exception of a very small number of experimental ship of the line and
frigates.

Lazarev was intensely interested in technological progress of
all sorts and pushed for the introduction of steam power in advance of
its acceptance and feasibility in a Russia that was only slowly entering
into the beginning stages of the Industrial Revolution. Had his
determination and dynamism been sufficient in and of itself to bring
about the modernization and reconstruction of Russian warships, the
Russian navy might well have been in a position to give a better account
of itself in 1853. As it was, his legacy was carried on by two of his
pupils, Vice Admiral Pavel Nakhimov and Vice Admiral Vladimir Kornilov,
both of whom insured the continuation of his standards of excellence and
both of whom died heroically during the siege of Sevastopol during the
Crimean War.

Turkey and the Caucasus Campaign 1830–40
In the wake of the Russo-Turkish War of 1827–9, the Ottoman Empire
found itself in the unlikely position of having to enter into friendly
relations with its ancient enemy, Russia. The rise of Egyptian power was
of more moment to Constantinople than the threat of further Russian
expansion to the south. While the Egyptians had fought alongside the
Turks at Navarino, the Egyptian Pasha Mehmed Ali was clearly on a
collision course with his Turkish overlord, the Sultan. By the early
1830s, both Egypt and Turkey were engaged in massive shipbuilding
programmes, and the former vassal state was in the lead. By 1837, the
Egyptian fleet included ten ships of the line with over 100 guns, two
with 88–92 guns and six in the 60-gun range – for a total of 18 capital
ships, a remarkable accomplishment in itself and one little noted by
most naval historians. Three of the 100-gun ships were under
construction, but all had been launched by 1838, although one of these
was accidentally burnt while fitting out.

Against this, only two 126-gun
ships, six with 74–80 guns and seven heavy frigates with 52 guns were
active at Constantinople out of a total Turkish strength of three
126-gun ships, 12 of 74–90 and ten heavy frigates of 50–60 guns
including one still under construction. The Turkish fleet was in poor
condition in contrast to the Egyptian. The only available counterweight
to the Egyptian navy was alliance with Russia and this carried a price
tag: opening of the Straits to Russian naval movements, the closing of
the Black Sea to non-Russian warships and the ceding of the Caucasus to
Russian control. In 1833, Admiral Lazarev entered the Bosporus at
Turkish invitation with the Black Sea fleet and 12,000 Russian troops
and saved Constantinople from almost certain capture by the Egyptians,
who were by this time in open revolt and approaching the heart of the
Empire with an army that had successfully defeated the Ottoman forces
sent against it. For their assistance in containing Mehmed Ali, Russia
was awarded with de facto control over the Straits until 1841 at which
time the combined power of France and Great Britain brought about a
return to previous restrictions on the movement of naval forces in
either direction.

The subjection of the independent tribal groups in the Caucasus
became a major focus for the Russians from 1836 on and through the early
1840s. While the rebellious ethnic groups presented no naval threat to
Russian control of the Black Sea, the elements of the Black Sea fleet –
from the lightest to the heaviest – were all extensively involved in the
full range of amphibious support activities, from transportation of
troops and supplies, to shore bombardment, to patrol and escort
activities, and to the landing, establishment, and protection of
beachheads and forts. While these activities must have been tedious in
the extreme, one can only surmise that the level of training, readiness
and seamanship of the ships involved must have been of a high order –
especially under Admiral Lazarev’s demanding leadership.

Sinop and the Crimean War 1853–6
The Russian Black Sea fleet had approached the highest standards of
efficiency during the closing years of the age of sail and its warships
and commanders were well regarded by informed British and French
observers. By mid-century, technological change was transforming
military and naval weapons and tactical systems at a rate that often
left even the most advanced European powers struggling to keep up. The
Ottoman Empire was quickly left behind by improvements in ordnance and
the introduction of steam propulsion, while their Russian rivals were at
the same time attempting with only limited success to keep abreast of
European powers possessing even more fully matured industrial and
scientific resources. One effect of the industrial revolution would be
the Russian destruction of Turkish naval forces at Sinop by means of
their more advanced ordnance, their more highly trained manpower
resources and their overwhelming materiel superiority. In a similar
manner, Russian naval power would in its turn be eclipsed very shortly
thereafter at the siege of Sevastopol’ by British and French naval
forces operating with even more highly developed technological
sophistication acting similarly in tandem with equally overwhelming
materiel superiority.

For westerners unaccustomed to the highly developed interrelatedness
of Russian naval and military operations, the decision of Emperor
Nicholas I, acting upon the advice of Prince Menshikov, to order Admiral
Nakhimov to scuttle the major elements of the Black Sea fleet at the
harbour entrance and send his sailors ashore along with their artillery
to aid in the defence of Sevastopol’ seems an act of craven cowardice or
incredibly poor judgment. Many of Nakhimov’s officers are said to have
held similar viewpoints, holding that the honour of Russia required a
fight to the death against an overwhelmingly powerful Anglo-French
armada in the open waters of the Black Sea. If real military
effectiveness is deemed the criterion in place of self-serving posturing
by officers imbued with an excess of nineteenth-century romanticism,
the practical contribution of the Russian sailors to the defence of
Sevastopol’ clearly out-weighed whatever propaganda value the heroic
sacrifice of the certainly doomed Russian battle fleet at sea by the
superior
Anglo-French forces might have had in the eyes of history and naval
tradition. If, on the other hand, real courage and sacrifice were to
become the criteria, the death of Admirals Kornilov, Istomin and
Nakhimov along with 15,000 seamen and officers during the siege and the
survival of a mere 600 speaks for itself.
Official Russian records credit the warship losses during the siege
of Sevastopol at 12 line of battle ships, two frigates, five corvettes
and brigs and five steam warships. This was the fleet built so carefully
over a quarter century by the will of Nicholas I and the skill and
leadership of Admiral Lazarev. It was unquestionably the most efficient
and well-trained fleet ever put into service by the Russian Navy during
the age of sail. Its inability to mount an effective challenge to the
combined fleets of two of the most powerful and technologically advanced
great powers of the period is no reflection on its standing in this
regard. The Treaty of Paris signed in March of 1856 ended the Crimean
War and forbade (temporarily as events were to prove) the future
operation of Russian naval forces in the Black Sea. Sailing ships would
hang on in the Baltic until 1860, but the death by scuttling of the
Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol marked the real end for the Russian
sailing navy.

The Hungarian campaign opened in fact on 20 January (1 February) 1849, when two small columns-those of Major General Engelhardt (3 battalions, 2 sotnias, and 8 guns) and Colonel Skaryatin (4 battalions, 5 sotnias, and 8 guns)-crossed the Transylvanian border on Lüders' orders (he had previously received Nicholas I's approval).

A peacetime order of battle of the Russian Army for July of 1914, listing all corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and independent battalions of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers with their garrison locations. All support, technical, administrative, supply, medical, and staff troops and units are also included with their locations and assignments.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Map of the battle of Gross-Jägersdorf on August 30 1757
Source: Kriege Friedrichs des Grossen, volume III by the German Grosser
Generalstab.

The Russians were moving against the East Prussian province by the
end of June. East Prussia, isolated from the main Prussian province of
Brandenburg/Pomerania, had at its disposal only 32,000 troops under the
command of Field Marshal Hans v. Lehwaldt. The Russians, under the
overall command of Field Marshal Stephen Fedorovich Apraksin, deployed
55,000 men in five corps along a broad front. They captured the port of
Memel on 5 July, and pressed on, intending to march on the East Prussian
capital of Königsberg. Lehwaldt decided to attack the Russian columns
when they came within striking distance, even though the Prussians, with
only 24,000 men, were outnumbered two to one.

On 30 August Lehwaldt and the Prussian army emerged from the west
near the town of Gross-Jägersdorf and attacked the Russians at around
5.00 am. The Prussians were spread thinly in linear formation. They had
surprised the Russians on the march and tried to take advantage of the
ensuing confusion. Heavy fighting took place in the center lines in the
Norkitten Wood, but the Russian artillery took a heavy toll of the
Prussians. After four salvoes against the center, the Prussian effort
was spent and a general retreat began. The Prussians lost 4,500 men and
the Russians lost 6,000. The Russians did not follow up the Prussian
retreat, allowing them to leave the battlefield without much
molestation. The Prussians, for their part, had a newfound respect for
the fighting capabilities of the Russians that was reinforced in the
later battles of Zorndorf and Kunersdorf.

A British observer reported that: ‘The Russian troops … can never act
with expedition.’ Ponderous drill movements and an almost lethargic
attitude to manoeuvre hindered the Russian ability to move troops easily
on the battlefield. At Gross-Jägersdorf a Russian observer noted that,
‘Our army was ranged immobile for the whole duration of the combat, with
the first rank kneeling and sitting.’ A Prussian reported that’ …
although deployment into line has been introduced into their service,
the infantry regiment is scarcely capable of arranging a line in less
than an hour, and even then the process is always attended with
disorder.’

The Russians decided to withdraw from East Prussia and returned to
Poland in October. The reasons for this decision are not clear, but
Apraksin was removed from his post as a result and ordered to appear at
court in St Petersburg. The Prussian field army also left East Prussia,
withdrawing to Pomerania to deal with Swedish attempts to seize
territory. The Russians returned to East Prussia in January 1758 with
72,000 men and attacked during the winter snows. The Prussians, without
the East Prussian field army, offered no real resistance on this
occasion, and the Russians took possession of the province, a position
they held until the end of the war. As other battles demonstrate,
territorial victories were not as important as destroying the field
armies of the enemy.

Like other early modern states, in the 1630s Russia’s leaders set out to reform and modernize the Army. They did so to a significant degree based on Dutch and Swedish “new model army” examples set decades earlier by Maurits of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus. In Russia during this period, the more modern units were known as “new-formation” regiments (re-formed units trained and equipped in Western European fashion). They first fought alongside older strel’sty units in the Smolensk War (1632-1634) waged between Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy. These early experimental units were disbanded at the end of that conflict, under social and economic pressure from traditional military interests. New-formation infantry, cavalry, and dragoon regiments were raised again in 1637 to fight the Tatars. Within a year, a core of 5,000 dragoons and 8,700 new infantry were recruited, then disbanded again. More experiments with new-formation troops took place in the 1640s, such as drafting peasants along the southern frontier with the Cossacks and Tatars to serve as part-time dragoons. Servitor or “dvorianstvo” (landed gentry) cavalry were also encouraged to resume their traditional role along the frontier, in exchange for avoiding further social debasement.

By the early 1650s the Russian Army had over 133,000 men recorded on its rolls, of whom just 7 percent were new-formation troops. The outbreak of three interrelated conflicts that drew Russia into protracted fighting from 1654 proved to be the spur needed to reform almost the whole Army-the closing events and weakening of Poland caused by the Khmelnitsky Uprising (1648-1654), the Second Northern War (1654-1660), and the Thirteen Years’ War (1654-1667). By 1663, fully 79 percent of Russian troops were in new-formation units. They were supplied with modern flintlock firearms, though some still used matchlocks longer than in western Europe. Both types of infantry weapon were eventually made in Russia at a factory built by Dutch experts at Tula in 1632, and expanded thereafter. Tens of thousands of additional muskets were imported from the United Provinces, Germany, and Sweden, as were many thousands of mercenaries. Through the last half of the 17th century, two famous Guards regiments, the Preobrazhenski Guards and Semenovskii Guards, formed the modern core of the Russian Army. They served alongside two bodyguard regiments, the strel’sty, and servitor cavalry. The fact that large Russian armies continued to be routinely dispatched and even routed by smaller Polish and Swedish forces surprised no one before 1709. But it should have, because military transformation in Russia was already under way before Peter I became tsar.

The “military revolution” in Russia was well under way by the end of the Thirteen Years’ War in 1667, by which time new-formation infantry constituted nearly 80% of all Russian Army formations outside the strel’sty. Moreover, many new-formation regiments were officered by well-trained and experienced Russians, rather than by foreigners. Nevertheless, the final transformation of the Russian Army into a modern force did not begin until just before the start of the Great Northern War (1700-1721). In 1699, Peter began an earnest expansion of the Army, in addition to having earlier commenced construction of an entirely new Navy. By 1700, Peter had herded 32,000 recruits into two regiments of dragoons and 27 of infantry, along with some squadrons of cavalry. These men, mostly peasants, were supported by remnants of older strel’sty regiments and servitor and Cossack cavalry. They were still in training when routed by the Swedes at Narva (1700).

Peter made much propaganda out of that defeat because it helped him discredit the old ways in favor of urgent reforms, which in turn swelled his reputation as a great modernizer, westernizer, and visionary. This should be borne in mind, even as it is noted that he was indeed the principal driving force behind radical change in Russian military culture and institutions, and that Narva was the pivot point of his reforms. In the years immediately following Narva, the Army was expanded to 47 infantry regiments. The servitor cavalry was sharply reshaped, with all eligible males age 15 and older registered for service in nine new-formation dragoon regiments founded in 1702. Peter also established five new grenadier regiments from existing companies. The changes were locked in place by a new recruitment system, established by decree in 1705, under which every 20 peasant households provided one recruit for the Army or Navy and supplied him with his food, uniform, and boots. The quota was filled by 1710, by which year the system was supplying up to 50,000 fresh recruits per annum. They were organized into two regiments of Guards, five of grenadiers, 35 of fusiliers, and 42 of ordinary infantry. Also by 1710, the cavalry arm reached 35,000 effectives, in addition to 45,000 Cossack and other auxiliaries. Army artillery had nearly 150 field guns and pulled a substantial siege train. These levels were more-or-less maintained to the end of the Great Northern War, despite heavy desertion rates among new conscripts.

More than increased numbers, what fundamentally changed within the Russian Army in this period was an emphasis on professionalism among officers and a correspondingly greater battlefield discipline. As with all early modern armies, this was achieved through intensive drill. Swedish soldiers and commanders began to notice as early as 1704 that whereas Russian armies previously had tended to break and flee once the battle started to go against them, “new-formation” regiments exhibited a growing ability to suffer reverses and then to rally and stand, or even counterattack.

Furthermore, the Russians did not just ape western tactics and styles of fighting. They learned their own methods and developed their own style, which was well adapted to conditions in the east. For instance, Russians showed an unusual willingness to emerge from entrenchments and fight before them in open combat, taking advantage of always-superior numbers. Similarly, Russian garrisons increasingly refused to sit inside fortresses, waiting for some Polish or Saxon army and siege train to arrive and blast them out. Instead, Russian defensive tactics emphasized mobility and harassment of enemy foraging parties and supply columns, relying on a natural advantage in cavalry numbers to carry out raids. Flexibility, using the terrain to advantage, and concealment in forest and swamp prior to seeking battle, rather than hunkering down inside fixed fortifications, became the hallmark of the Petrine military. This was nowhere in greater evidence than during the brilliant Russian defensive campaign of 1708-1709 that culminated in triumph at Poltava. By the time Peter died in 1725, he had modernized the Russian Army and raised its standing cohorts to 130,000 men. More importantly, he had also persuaded the noble service elite that, as had been the case for the Swedish service and military elite in the 17th century, the dawning 18th century presented Russia with opportunities to grow great and rich through aggressive war.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Capture of Azov by Robert Kerr Porter. Peter stands in the foreground, commanding his troops

Measured by large outcomes, the Imperial Russian military
establishment evolved through two distinct stages. From the era of Peter the
Great through the reign of Alexander III, the Russian army and navy fought,
borrowed, and innovated their way to more successes than failures. With the
major exception of the Crimean War, Russian ground and naval forces largely
overcame the challenges and contradictions inherent in diverse circumstances
and multiple foes to extend and defend the limits of empire. However, by the
time of Nicholas II, significant lapses in leadership and adaptation spawned
the kinds of repetitive disaster and fundamental disaffection that exceeded the
military's ability to recuperate.

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ARMY

The Imperial Russian Army and Navy owed their origins to
Peter I, although less so for the army than the navy. The army's deeper roots
clearly lay with Muscovite precedent, especially with Tsar Alexei
Mikhailovich's European-inspired new regiments of foreign formation. The Great
Reformer breathed transforming energy and intensity into these and other
precedents to fashion a standing regular army that by 1725 counted 112,000
troops in two guards, two grenadier, forty-two infantry, and thirty-three
dragoon regiments, with supporting artillery and auxiliaries. To serve this
establishment, he also fashioned administrative, financial, and logistical
mechanisms, along with a rational rank structure and systematic officer and
soldier recruitment. With an admixture of foreigners, the officer corps came
primarily from the Russian nobility, while soldiers came from recruit levies
against the peasant population.

Fleet of Peter the Great (1909) by Eugene Lanceray.

Although Peter's standing force owed much to European
precedent, his military diverged from conventional patterns to incorporate
irregular cavalry levies, especially Cossacks, and to evolve a military art
that emphasized flexibility and practicality for combating both conventional
northern European foes and less conventional steppe adversaries. After mixed
success against the Tatars and Turks at Azov in 1695-1696, and after a severe
reverse at Narva (1700) against the Swedes at the outset of the Great Northern
War, Peter's army notched important victories at Dorpat (1704), Lesnaya (1708),
and Poltava (1709). After an abrupt loss in 1711 to the Turks on the Pruth
River, Peter dogged his Swedish adversaries until they came to terms at Nystadt
in 1721. Subsequently, Peter took to the Caspian basin, where during the early
1720s his Lower (or Southern) Corps campaigned as far south as Persia.

After Peter's death, the army's fortunes waned and waxed,
with much of its development characterized by which aspect of the Petrine
legacy seemed most politic and appropriate for time and circumstance. Under
Empress Anna Ioannovna, the army came to reflect a strong European, especially
Prussian, bias in organization and tactics, a bias that during the 1730s
contributed to defeat and indecision against the Tatars and Turks. Under
Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, the army reverted partially to Petrine precedent,
but retained a sufficiently strong European character to give good account for
itself in the Seven Years' War. Although in 1761 the military- organizational
pendulum under Peter III again swung briefly and decisively in favor of
Prussianinspired models, a palace coup in favor of his wife, who became Empress
Catherine II, ushered in a lengthy period of renewed military development.
During Catherine's reign, the army fought two major wars against Turkey and its
steppe allies to emerge as the largest ground force in Europe. Three commanders
were especially responsible for bringing Russian military power to bear against
elusive southern adversaries. Two, Peter Alexandrovich Rumyantsev and Alexander
Vasilievich Suvorov, were veterans of the Seven Years War, while the third,
Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin, was a commander and administrator of great
intellect, influence, and organizational talent.

Equestrian portrait of Catherine II of Russia (1729-1796) - Catherine II of Russia in Life Guard Uniform on the Horse Brillante, by Vigilius Eriksen

During Catherine's First Turkish War (1768-1774), Rumyantsev
successfully employed flexible tactics and simplified Russian military
organization to win significant victories at Larga and Kagul (both 1770).
Suvorov, meanwhile, defeated the Polish Confederation of Bar, then after 1774
campaigned in the Crimea and the Nogai steppe. At the same time, regular army
formations played an important role in suppressing the Pugachev rebellion
(1773-1775). During Catherine's Second Turkish War (1787-1792), Potemkin
emerged as the impresario of final victory over the Porte for hegemony over the
northern Black Sea littoral, while Suvorov emerged as perhaps the most talented
Russian field commander of all time. Potemkin inherently understood the value
of irregular cavalry forces in the south, and he took measures to regularize
Cossack service and bring them more fully under Russian military authority, or
failing that, to abolish recalcitrant Cossack hosts. Following Rumyantsev's
precedent, he also lightened and multiplied the number of light infantry and
light cavalry formations, while emphasizing utility and practicality in drill
and items of equipment. In the field, Suvorov further refined Rumyantsev's
tactical innovations to emphasize "speed, assessment, attack."
Suvorov's battlefield successes, together with the conquest of Ochakov (1788)
and Izmail (1790) and important sallies across the Danube, brought Russia
favorable terms at Jassy (1792). Even as war raged in the south, the army in
the north once again defeated Sweden (1788-1790), then in 1793-1794 overran a
rebellious Poland, setting the stage for its third partition.

Under Paul I, the army chaffed under the imposition of
direct monarchical authority, the more so because it brought another brief
dalliance with Prussian military models. Suvorov was temporarily banished, but
was later recalled to lead Russian forces in northern Italy as part of the
Second Coalition against revolutionary France. In 1799, despite Austrian
interference, Suvorov drove the French from the field, then brilliantly
extricated his forces from Italy across the Alps. The eighteenth century closed
with the army a strongly entrenched feature of Russian imperial might, a force
to be reckoned with on both the plains of Europe and the steppes of Eurasia.

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NAVY

In contrast with the army, Muscovite precedent afforded
scant inspiration for the Imperial Russian Navy, the origins of which clearly
lay with Peter the Great. Enamored with the sea and sailing ships, Peter
borrowed from foreign technology and expertise initially to create naval forces
on both the Azov and Baltic Seas. Although the Russian navy would always remain
"the second arm" for an essentially continental power, sea-going
forces figured prominently in Peter's military successes. In both the south and
north, his galley fleets supported the army in riverine and coastal operations,
then went on to win important Baltic victories over the Swedes, most notably at
Gangut/Hanko (1714). Peter also developed an open-water sailing capability, so
that by 1724 his Baltic Fleet numbered 34 ships-of-the-line, in addition to
numerous galleys and auxiliaries. Smaller flotillas sailed the White and
Caspian Seas.

Battle of the Chios Straits (Prelude to the Battle of Chesma) July 5th (June 24th) 1770 By Ivan Aivazovsky. 1848

More dependent than the army on rigorous and regular
sustenance and maintenance, the Imperial Russian Navy after Peter languished
until the era of Catherine II. She appointed her son general admiral,
revitalized the Baltic Fleet, and later established Sevastopol as a base for
the emerging Black Sea Fleet. In 1770, during the Empress' First Turkish War, a
squadron under Admiral Alexei Grigorievich Orlov defeated the Turks decisively
at Chesme. During the Second Turkish War, a rudimentary Black Sea Fleet under
Admiral Fyedor Fyedorovich Ushakov frequently operated both independently and
in direct support of ground forces. The same ground-sea cooperation held true
in the Baltic, where Vasily Yakovlevich Chichagov's fleet also ended Swedish
naval pretensions. Meanwhile, in 1799 Admiral Ushakov scored a series of
Mediterranean victories over the French, before the Russians withdrew from the
Second Coalition.

THE ARMY AND NAVY IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY

At the outset of the century, Alexander I inherited a
sizeable and unaffordable army, many of whose commanders were seasoned
veterans. After instituting a series of modest administrative reforms for
efficiency and economy, including the creation of a true War Ministry, the Tsar
in 1805 plunged into the wars of the Third Coalition. For all their experience
and flexibility, the Russians with or without the benefit of allies against
Napoleon suffered a series of reverses or stalemates, including Austerlitz (1805),
Eylau (1807), and Friedland (1807). After the ensuing Tilsit Peace granted five
years' respite, Napoleon's Grand Armée invaded Russia in 1812. Following a
fighting Russian withdrawal into the interior, Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov in
September gave indecisive battle at Borodino, followed by another withdrawal to
the southeast that uncovered Moscow. When the French quit Moscow in October,
Kutuzov pursued, reinforced by swarms of partisans and Cossacks, who, together
with starvation and severe cold, harassed the Grand Armée to destruction. In
1813, the Russian army fought in Germany, and in 1814 participated in the
coalition victory at Leipzig, followed by a fighting entry into France and the
occupation of Paris.

The successful termination of the Napoleonic wars still left
Alexander I with an outsized and unaffordable military establishment, but now
with the addition of disaffected elements within the officer corps. While some
gentry officers formed secret societies to espouse revolutionary causes, the
tsar experimented with the establishment of settled troops, or military
colonies, to reduce maintenance costs. Although these colonies were in many
ways only an extension of the previous century's experience with military
settlers on the frontier, their widespread application spawned much discontent.
After Alexander I's death, unrest and conspiracy led to an attempted military
coup in December 1825.

Russian Black Sea Fleet on a Parade

Tsar Nicholas I energetically suppressed the socalled
Decembrist rebellion, then imposed parade ground order. His standing army grew
to number one million troops, but its outdated recruitment system and
traditional support infrastructure eventually proved incapable of meeting the
challenges of military modernization. Superficially, the army was a model of
predictable routine and harsh discipline, but its inherent shortcomings,
including outmoded weaponry, incapacity for rapid expansion, and lack of
strategic mobility, led inexorably to Crimean defeat. The army was able to
subdue Polish military insurrectionists (1830-1831) and Hungarian
revolutionaries (1848), and successfully fight Persians and Turks (1826-1828,
1828-1829), but in the field it lagged behind its more modern European
counterparts. Fighting from 1854 to 1856 against an allied coalition in the
Crimea, the Russians suffered defeat at Alma, heavy losses at Balaklava and
Inkerman, and the humiliation of surrender at Sevastopol. Only the experience
of extended warfare in the Caucasus (1801-1864) afforded unconventional
antidote to the conventional "paradomania" of St. Petersburg that had
so thoroughly inspired Crimean defeat. Thus, the mountains replaced the steppe
as the southern pole in an updated version of the previous century's northsouth
dialectic.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the navy,
too, experienced its own version of the same dialectic. For a brief period, the
Russian navy under Admiral Dmity Nikolayevich Senyavin harassed Turkish forces
in the Aegean, but following Tilsit, the British Royal Navy ruled in both the
Baltic and the Mediterranean. In 1827, the Russians joined with the British and
French to pound the Turks at Navarino, but in the north, the Baltic Fleet, like
the St. Petersburg military establishment, soon degenerated into an imperial
parading force. Only on the Black Sea, where units regularly supported Russian
ground forces in the Caucasus, did the Navy reveal any sustained tactical and
operational acumen. However, this attainment soon proved counterproductive, for
Russian naval victory in 1853 over the Turks at Sinope drew the British and
French to the Turkish cause, thus setting the stage for allied intervention in
the Crimea. During the Crimean War, steam and screw-driven allied vessels
attacked at will in both the north and south, thereby revealing the essentially
backwardness of Russia's sailing navy.

THE ARMY AND NAVY DURING THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY

Alexander II's era of the Great Reforms marked an important
watershed for both services. In a series of reforms between 1861 and 1874, War
Minister Dmitry Alexeyevich Milyutin created the foundations for a genuine
cadre- and reserve-based ground force. He facilitated introduction of a
universal service obligation, and he rearmed, reequipped, and redeployed the
army to contend with the gradually emerging German and Austro-Hungarian threat
along the Empire's western frontier. In 1863-1864 the army once again suppressed
a Polish rebellion, while in the 1860s and 1870s small mobile forces figured in
extensive military conquests in Central Asia. War also flared with Turkey in
1877-1878, during which the army, despite a ragged beginning, inconsistent
field leadership, and inadequacies in logistics and medical support, acquitted
itself well, especially in a decisive campaign in the European theater south of
the Balkan ridge. Similar circumstances governed in the Transcausus theater,
where the army overcame initial setbacks to seize Kars and carry the campaign
into Asia Minor.

Following the war of 1877-1878, planning and deployment
priorities wedded the army more closely to the western military frontier and
especially to peacetime deployments in Russian Poland. With considerable
difficulty, Alexander III presided over a limited force modernization that
witnessed the adoption of smokeless powder weaponry and changes in size and
force structure that kept the army on nearly equal terms with its two more
significant potential adversaries, Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary. At the
same time, the end of the century brought extensive new military commitments to
the Far East, both to protect expanding imperial interests and to participate
in suppression of the Boxer Rebellion (1900).

Russian Army and Navy 1904-1905

The same challenges of force modernization and diverse
responsibilities bedeviled the navy, perhaps more so than the army. During the
1860s and 1870s, the navy made the difficult transition from sail to steam, but
thereafter had to deal with increasingly diverse geostrategic requirements that
mandated retention of naval forces in at least four theaters (Baltic, Northern,
Black Sea, and Pacific), none of which were mutually supporting.
Simultaneously, the Russian Admiralty grappled with issues of role and identity,
pondering whether the navy's primary mission in war lay either with coastal
defense and commerce raiding or with attainment of true "blue water"
supremacy in the tradition of Alfred Thayer Mahan and his Russian navalist
disciples. Rationale notwithstanding, by 1898 Russia possessed Europe's third
largest navy (nineteen capital ships and more than fifty cruisers), thanks
primarily to the ship-building programs of Alexander III.

THE ARMY AND NAVY OF NICHOLAS II

Under Russia's last tsar, the army went from defeat to
disaster and despair. Initially overcommitted and split by a new dichotomy
between the Far East and the European military frontier, the army fared poorly
in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Poor strategic vision and even worse
battlefield execution in a Far Eastern littoral war brought defeat because
Russia failed to bring its overwhelming resources to bear. While the navy early
ceded the initiative and command of the sea to the Japanese, Russian ground
force buildups across vast distances were slow. General Adjutant Alexei
Nikolayevich Kuropatkin and his subordinates lacked the capacity either to
fight expert delaying actions or to master the complexities of meeting
engagements that evolved into main battles and operations. Tethered to an
8-thousand-kilometer-long line of communications, the army marched through a
series of reverses from the banks of the Yalu (May 1904) to the environs of
Mukden (February-March 1905). Although the garrison at Port Arthur retained the
capacity to resist, premature surrender of the fortress in early 1905 merely
added to Russian humiliation.

The Imperial Russian Navy fared even worse. Except for
Stepan Osipovich Makarov, who was killed early, Russian admirals in the Far
East presented a picture of indolence and incompetence. The Russian Pacific
Squadron at Port Arthur made several half-hearted sorties, then was bottled up
at its base by Admiral Togo, until late in 1904 when Japanese siege artillery
pounded the Squadron to pieces. When the tsar sent his Baltic Fleet
(rechristened the Second Pacific Squadron) to the Far East, it fell prey to the
Japanese at Tsushima (May 1905) in a naval battle of annihilation. In all, the
tsar lost fifteen capital ships in the Far East, the backbone of two battle
fleets.

The years between 1905 and 1914 witnessed renewal and
reconstruction, neither of which sufficed to prepare the tsar's army and navy
for World War I. Far Eastern defeat fueled the fires of the Revolution of 1905,
and both services witnessed mutinies within their ranks. Once the dissidents
were weeded out, standing army troops were employed liberally until 1907 to
suppress popular disorder. By 1910, stability and improved economic conditions
permitted General Adjutant Vladimir Alexandrovich Sukhomlinov's War Ministry to
undertake limited reforms in the army's recruitment, organization, deployment,
armament, and supply structure. More could have been done, but the navy
siphoned off precious funds for ambitious shipbuilding programs to restore the
second arm's power and prestige. The overall objective was to prepare Russia
for war with the Triple Alliance. Obsession with the threat opposite the
western military frontier gradually eliminated earlier dichotomies and subsumed
all other strategic priorities.

The outbreak of hostilities in 1914 came too soon for
various reform and reconstruction projects to bear full fruit. Again, the
Russians suffered from strategic overreach and stretched their military and
naval resources too thin. Moreover, military leaders failed to build sound
linkages between design and application, between means and objectives, and
between troops and their command instances. These and other shortcomings,
including an inadequate logistics system and the regime's inability fully to
mobilize the home front to support the fighting front, proved disastrous. Thus,
the Russians successfully mobilized 3.9 million troops for a short war of
military annihilation, but early disasters in East Prussia at Tannenberg and
the Masurian Lakes, along with a stalled offensive in Galicia, inexorably led
to a protracted war of attrition and exhaustion. In 1915, when German offensive
pressure caused the Russian Supreme Command to shorten its front in Russian
Poland, withdrawal turned into a costly rout. One of the few positive notes
came in 1916, when the Russian Southwest Front under General Alexei Alexeyevich
Brusilov launched perhaps the most successful offensive of the entire war on
all its fronts. Meanwhile, a navy still not fully recovered from 1904-1905
generally discharged its required supporting functions. In the Baltic, it laid
mine fields and protected approaches to Petrograd. In the Black Sea, after
initial difficulties with German units serving under Turkish colors, the fleet
performed well in a series of support and amphibious operations.

The WWI-era Sikorsky Il'ya Muromets, the first 4-engined heavy bomber

Ultimately, a combination of seemingly endless bloodletting,
war-weariness, governmental inefficiency, and the regime's political ineptness
facilitated the spread of pacifist and revolutionary sentiment in both the army
and navy. By the beginning of 1917, sufficient malaise had set in to render
both services incapable either of consistent loyalty or of sustained and
effective combat operations. In the end, neither the army nor the navy offered
proof against the tsar's internal and external enemies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baumann, Robert F. (1993). Russian-Soviet
Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan. Ft.
Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute. Curtiss, John S. (1965). The Russian
Army of Nicholas I, 1825-1855. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Duffy,
Christopher. (1981). Russia's Military Way to the West: Origins and Nature of
Russian Military Power 1700-1800. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Fuller,
William C., Jr. (1992). Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914. New York: The
Free Press. Kagan, Frederick W. (1999). The Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The
Origins of the Modern Russian Army. New York: St. Martin's Press. Kagan,
Frederick W., and Higham, Robin, eds. (2002). The Military History of Tsarist
Russia. New York: Palgrave. Keep, John L. H. (1985). Soldiers of the Tsar: Army
and Society in Russia, 1462-1874. Oxford: Clarendon Press. LeDonne, John P.
(2003). The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650-1831. New York: Oxford
University Press. Menning, Bruce W. (2000). Bayonets before Bullets: The
Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mitchell, Donald W. (1974). A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power. New
York: Macmillan. Reddel, Carl F., ed. (1990). Transformation in Russian and
Soviet Military History. Washington, DC: U. S. Air Force Academy and Office of
Air Force History. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David, and Menning, Bruce W.,
eds. (2003). Reforming the Tsar's Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia
from Peter the Great to the Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Stone, Norman. (1975). The Eastern Front 1914-1917. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. Westwood, J. N. (1986). Russia against Japan, 1904-1905.
Albany: State University of New York Press. Woodward, David. (1965). The
Russians at Sea: A History of the Russian Navy. New York: Frederick A. Praeger.

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Military reform has been one of the central aspects of
Russia's drive to modernize and become a leading European military, political,
and economic power. Ivan IV (d. 1584) gave away pomestie lands to create a
permanent military service class, and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (d. 1676)
enserfed Russia's peasants to guarantee the political support of these military
servitors. In the same period, Alexei, seeking to modernize his realm, invited
Westerners to Russia to introduce advanced technical capabilities. But as the
eighteenth century dawned, Russia found itself surrounded and outmatched by
hostile enemies to its north, south, west, and, to a lessor extent, to its
east. At the same time, perhaps Russia's most energetic tsar, Peter the Great
(d. 1725), adopted a grand strategy based on the goal of conquering adversaries
in all directions. Such ambitions required the complete overhaul of the Russian
nation. As a result, the reforms of Peter the Great represent the beginning of
the modern era of Russian history.

Military reform, designed to create a powerful permanently
standing army and navy, was the central goal of all of Peter the Great's monumental
reforms. His most notable military reforms included the creation of a navy that
he used to great effect against the Ottomans in the sea of Azov and the Swedes
in the Baltic during the Great Northern War; the creation of the Guard's
Officer Corps that became the basis of the standing professional officer corps
until they became superannuated and replaced by officers with General Staff
training during the nineteenth century; a twenty-five year service requirement
for peasants selected by lot to be soldiers; and his codifying military's
existence by personally writing a set of instructions in 1716 for the army and
1720 for the navy. While these reforms transformed the operational capabilities
of the Russian military, Peter the Great also sought to create the social and
administrative basis for maintaining this newly generated power. In 1720 he
created administrative colleges specifically to furnish the army and navy with
a higher administrative apparatus to oversee the acquisition of equipment,
supplies, and recruits. Peter's final seminal reform, however, was the 1722
creation of the Table of Ranks, which linked social and political mobility to
the idea of merit, not only in the military but throughout Russia.

Potemkin in later life

The irony of Peter's culminating reform was that the
nobility did not accept the Table of Ranks because it forced them to work to
maintain what they viewed as their inherited birthright to power, privilege,
and status. While no major military reforms occurred until after the 1853-1856
Crimean War, the work of Catherine II's (d. 1796) "Great Captains,"
Peter Rumyanstev, Grigory Potemkin, and Alexander Suvorov, combined with the
reforming efforts of Paul I (d. 1801), created a system for educating and
training officers and defined everything from uniforms to operational doctrine.
None of these efforts amounted in scope to the reforms that preceded or
followed, but together they provided Russia with a military establishment
powerful enough to defeat adversaries ranging from the powerful French to the declining
Ottomans. Realizing that the army was too large and too wasteful, Nicholas I
(d. 1855) spent the balance of the 1830s and 1840s introducing administrative
reforms to streamline and enhance performance but, as events in the Crimea
demonstrated, without success.

Alexander II's (d. 1881) 1861 peasant emancipation launched
his Great Reforms and set the stage for the enlightened War Minister Dmitry
Milyutin to reorganize Russia's military establishment in every aspect
imaginable. His most enduring reform was the 1862-1864 establishment of the
fifteen military districts that imposed a centralized and manageable
administrative and command system over the entire army. Then, to reintroduce
the concept of meritocracy into the officer training system, he reorganized the
Cadet Corps Academies into Junker schools in 1864 to provide an education to
all qualified candidates regardless of social status. In addition, in 1868 he
oversaw the recasting of the army's standing wartime orders. The result of
these three reforms centralized all power within the army into the war
minister's hands. But Milyutin's most important reform was the Universal
Conscription Act of 1874 that required all Russian men to serve first in the
active army and then in the reserves. Modeled after the system recently
implemented by the Prussians in their stunningly successful unification, Russia
now had the basis for a modern conscript army that utilized the Empire's
superiority in manpower without maintaining a costly standing army.

Milyutin's reforms completely overhauled Russia's military
system. But a difficult victory in the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War and the
debacle of the Russo-Japanese War demonstrated that Russia's military
establishment was in need of further and immediate reform in the post-1905
period. In the war's aftermath, the army and the navy were overrun with
reforming schemes and undertakings that ranged from the creation of the Supreme
Defense Council to unify all military policy, to the emergence of an autonomous
General Staff (something Milyutin intentionally avoided), to the 1906
appointment of a Higher Attestation Commission charged with the task of purging
the officer corps of dead weight. By 1910, the reaction to military defeat had
calmed down, and War Minister Vladimir Sukhomlinov sought to address future
concerns with a series of reforms that simplified the organization of army
corps and sought to rationalize the deployment of troops throughout the Empire.
These reforms demonstrated the future needs of the army well, resulting in the
1914 passage of a bill (The Large Program) through the Duma designed to finance
the strengthening of the entire military establishment.

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About Me

Mitch Williamson is a technical writer with an
interest in military and naval affairs. He has published articles in
Cross & Cockade International and Wartime magazines. He was
research associate for the Bio-history Cross in the Sky, a book about
Charles 'Moth' Eaton's career, in collaboration with the flier's son,
Dr Charles S. Eaton. He also assisted in picture research for John
Burton's Fortnight of Infamy.
Mitch is now publishing on the WWW various specialist websites combined
with custom website design work.